July 1980. In Moscow, the first Olympic Games are held beyond the Iron Curtain. Polish pole vaulter Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz wins the gold medal, under the whistles of the Moscow public, to which he responds with… a finger of honor. In Gdansk, Lech Walesa, an electrician from the Lenin shipyards, is also preparing to give his arm of honor with his Solidarnosc union. Rich in many testimonies and archive images, Barbara Necek’s documentary recounts hour by hour the creation of this first free trade union in the communist world, which opened “the first breach” in the Warsaw Pact.
The Lenin Shipyard is one of the jewels of the Polish economy. “We were proud to work there, it was the elite of the working class”, recalls Jean-Yves Potel, a writer present on the spot in August 1980. In 1970, the workers took to the streets of Gdansk to protest against price increases. “Very quickly the protests took on a political twist,” said Bogdan Borusewicz, one of the organizers. Security forces fire into the crowd, killing 42 people and wounding more than a thousand others.
Ten years later, yet another price hike and the dismissal of a crane operator for union activity, a few months after the electrician Walesa, set the fire to the powder. On August 15, the workers put down their tools. This time, they barricade themselves in the shipyard. (Illegal) distribution of leaflets, word of mouth… The breach is rapidly widening, other workers are following the movement, in public transport in particular. “Arriving at the Baltic station, I announced to the passengers that I was stopping to go on strike,” said tram driver Henrika Krzywonos.
A political weapon
At the Lenin shipyards, the management reintegrates Walesa and the crane operator. But the transport strikers come to ask their comrades “not to stop the movement, to be in solidarity with them”, recalls Lech Walesa, who sees there “the possibility of moving from a company strike to a regional strike “. His union becomes a political weapon. Ten million Poles will eventually take the card.
Solidarnosc (“solidarity”), the name will be obvious. In Gdansk, intellectuals, delegates from 200 companies from all over the country come to elaborate the demands. First social, so as not to skip the stages. Start by “creating a breach to attack the system”, summarizes Bogdan Borusewicz.
The sequel went down in history. Disbanded in 1981, after the proclamation of martial law, the union will continue to work underground with the support of the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II. Until the final breach: the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.
